Happy new year? I think we all know what’s going to happen

So, how about that 2024, eh? What an absolute shocker of a … ah, who cares. If you celebrated New Year’s Eve properly on Tuesday night, or whenever it was, you will have sustained minimal brain damage and struggle to remember anything that happened last year.

This is the natural order of things. We do. We regret. We move on. It’s the cycle of laugh.

I’m more interested in this year. 2025 has the ring of promise to it. Here’s my first prediction. In precisely a year from today, we will stand around the braai and shake our greying heads and agree that there has never been a worse year than 2025 in the history of recorded time. And we will all agree that 2026 will be so much better.

Frankly, it’s a mystery how we evolved from dolphins and yet they are so much smarter than us today.

But for now, while we are unaware of the fresh horrors to be unleashed upon us, let us be blindly optimistic and relentlessly cheerful. By now the bastards are already lining up to grind us down, but this could be the year we turn things around and grind THEM down. They’ve had it coming for a long time.

Who are the bastards, you ask? Well, that’s entirely up to you. We all have our personal bastards, and if you don’t, you’re doing something wrong.

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This year I will be forming the Anti-Bastard Liberation Front and intend to release my manifesto in much the same way that Israel releases its Palestinian prisoners. In other words, not at all. Write your own damn manifesto. Bastards, like the poor, will always be with us. But there are more of them than there are of us. Like Manchester United, we can never win.

Right, then. Straight off the bat, 2025 adds up to 27. No, wait. Nine. This is a very auspicious number. Far better than 27, the age when some of the most promising musicians accidentally died while enjoying themselves. There’s even a club named after them. I don’t mean a nightclub, although that would be a brilliant name for one where you go to have so much fun that you die. Not much repeat business, though.

Nine is also the German word for no, frequently used when it comes to voting for a progressive government.

Like most writers who can’t be bothered to do proper research, I turned to Wikipedia. “In numerology, the number 9 represents completion, although not a final ending – more like the fulfilment of one cycle so that you can prepare to initiate the next one.”

This sounds like the gibberish that hard-of-thinking political journalists trot out when wrapping up their so-called analyses – “only time will tell”.

I’m preparing to initiate my next gin and tonic. Maybe a rum and coke to switch things up. I haven’t decided yet.

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I’m in an Airbnb in a deep local neighbourhood on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. I woke up on Wednesday morning to find my car battery was flat after some idiot left the keys in the ignition. It was still switched on but the engine had seemingly stalled. A fishing knife was embedded in the front door. I had no idea if it was a death threat or a Costa Rican tradition.

The only other guest is a dangerously young Canadian surfer who appears to have barricaded herself in her room after hearing what must have sounded like gunshots. Just opening beers, dear. It’s safe to come out. Trust me, I’m a journalist.

Premonitions, suppositions and predictions abound at this time of year. The pressure is on to get it right. Not really. Not in SA. Politically and economically, we live in a tata ma chance universe. Perhaps this is the year we finally understand that uniting across racial and political lines and taking to the streets in terrifying numbers is the only way things might get done. Current odds are 100 to 1 against and increasing fast.

In other important news, Pantone has declared its Colour of the Year to be – drumroll, please – Mocha Mousse. “Pantone selects a colour each year that expresses a global mood and an attitude.” The colour was selected around the time Donald Trump won the election. It expresses just how much in the global sh*t we all are.

Other visionaries, mostly found huddled around the fire at the bottom of the garden, might tell you that Taurus and Gemini will attract significant wealth this year. And then ask you to pass the joint. So if you’re a Taurus married to a Pisces, ditch his/her ass and find yourself a Gemini.

Then again, Geminis, like all twins, are hard work. It would be easier to hook up with a Scorpio. You might wake up every morning poor and bleeding, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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On the technology front, Trump will get fed up with Elon Musk upstaging him and have him deported. South Africa will deny him entry and he will spend the rest of his life in transit, trying to impregnate Chick-fil-A waitresses under the assumed name of Adrian Dittmann.

The alleged government of national unity will turn into an aquarium of bottom-feeding human anglerfish that have adapted rapidly to their dark habitat by using lucrative tenders to lure their prey. The smaller DA males and Gayton McKenzie will attach themselves to anything to ensure the nest eggs are fertilised at all times.

I should probably stop now. I’d say happy 2025, but I think we all know what’s going to happen.